


getting even

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [21]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Double Dating, F/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:58:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20598134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Two disasters try to pretend they're interested in their respective dates and not each other on the worst double date in history.





	getting even

Before Beth even has a chance to say “no,” before she can even _ attempt _ to come up with a reason why it is an absolutely terrible idea to invite Rio and his _ date _ to join them, Peter jumps up from his seat and comes over to her side of the table.

“The more the merrier!” Peter says, waving them over. Rio smiles in a condescending way—like maybe this is what he expected?—and Beth’s certain Peter fails picks up on Rio’s superciliousness. “Please, sit.”

“I’m Charlotte,” Rio’s date says, beaming, as she and Rio settle into their seats. 

“Nice to meet you,” Peter says, reaching his hand across the table. “Peter.”

Beth watches as Rio snakes his arm across the back of Charlotte’s chair, letting his hand hang there languidly.

Rio smirks when Beth fails to follow the rhythm of the conversation and introduce herself. “This is Elizabeth. She’s a—_ah_—really good work friend.”

Beth’s breath catches in her throat, and suddenly, being on the other side of them, she regrets her words in an entirely new way. 

“Wonderful to meet you,” Charlotte says, smiling. Beth tries to rearrange her face into something mirroring Charlotte’s expression, but she’s not sure that it’s working. All she manages is a nod, but she’s saved, temporarily, when a waitress comes by to take Charlotte and Rio’s drink orders.

“Do you go by Elizabeth?” Peter whispers, leaning in close to her. “I didn’t know—should _ I _ call you Elizabeth?”

Beth notices Rio watching their exchange with interest. He’s got one ear turned toward the waitress, waiting for her to address him, but his eyes are focused only on her over his drink menu.

Beth wonders why he’s even holding it, why he’s even pretending he’d be interested in anything but his usual. She knows he’s just going to order a vodka neat. 

Beth looks away from him to turn to Peter. “Um, no. No—Beth’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s a flash memory of Beth drunk dialing Rio in the middle of the night demanding to know why he’d left the dubby in her mailbox—a bold move inspired by her overthinking the way Rio calling her Elizabeth felt… _ intimate_. She shouldn’t be protective over this, and yet—

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“I mean, I don’t think I ever really gave you an opportunity to tell me if you prefer something else now. Are you positi—”

“_ Yes _!” It comes out more shrill than she’d like. Her hands are laid flat on her thighs under the table, hidden, and she flexes her fingers in her annoyance as she tries to regain control over her vocal chords. “Please. Just Beth.”

Beth can sense that Peter has picked up that there’s some weirdness that he doesn’t know about, but he doesn’t pry. Beth glances at Rio, who takes his lower lip into his mouth, and nods once, like—like this exchange had been for _ him_. He only tears his eyes away from her to look at the waitress and say, “Vodka neat, please.”

“I’m sure you guys—” Beth has to clear her throat, start over, because her voice cracks a little. “I’m sure you guys would rather be alone on your… date?”

There’s still a bubble of hope left in her that she’ll be contradicted, but—

“Oh, we’re fine,” Charlotte says breezily, waving away Beth’s suggestion with a flourish of her braceleted wrist. “It’s, what? The fourth date now? Fifth—if you count the few hours we spent together when we first met.”

There’s a moment where Charlotte and Rio grin at each other, and it’s brief, but Beth’s stomach is in knots. _ Fourth date? Hours spent together? _ She’d barely had time to process that Rio was on a date at all—here, in _ front _ of her—and she doesn’t even know what to do with this information. 

“Honestly, I’m a little bored of watching the man brood,” Charlotte teases.

“Yeah, uh, he’s good at that,” Beth agrees, tripping over her words, reaching out for her drink just for something to do. 

“Plus, I’m actually kind of excited to meet a _ friend _ of his. You’ve gotta have dirt on him.” Charlotte grins at Rio, needling him. “He’s _ such _ an enigma.”

_You have no idea_. Beth takes a drink of her bourbon—anything to avoid faking another smile.

“Where did you two meet?” Peter asks. _ Of course he does. _

Simultaneously, Beth wants to know everything and nothing about them. 

“Storage locker.” Rio watches Beth for her reaction, so she refuses to give one.

Peter laughs a little, like this is a funny place to meet-cute. “Interesting.”

“Yeah, I just moved here from Port Austin. My boys were _ supposed _ to be helping me, but of course they were over it after about ten minutes.” 

There’s a brief second where Beth’s instincts are off, and she hears _ my boys _ and thinks of Rio’s boys—thinks Charlotte might be a part of their world—until she realizes Charlotte probably means her _ children. _Charlotte rolls her eyes at their laziness, but Beth can see that it’s good-humored.

“He was barking some orders on his cell phone, _ scowling _ outside his locker, looking all intimidating with that neck tattoo of his—” Pausing, Charlotte reaches out and brushes a finger against the bird, and Beth has to look away, has to study anything else in this lounge except for the two people sitting in front of her. 

“Gotta admit—” Peter interjects. “That intimidated me, too!”

Charlotte laughs and Rio looks smug. Continuing, Charlotte says, “I was like, _ God, better avoid that guy _, and then he hung up and noticed I was struggling to move an end table. He helped me move the rest of my stuff while my boys sat on bubble wrap and played Fortnite.”

Charlotte’s smile is dazzling. Beth can imagine the whole thing in her head: Rio, at the storage locker to pick up the pills for distro that his boys had sorted and cleaned from the bus depot—arguing on the phone, maybe even with _her_—before turning and laying his eyes on Charlotte. 

She’s _ gorgeous. _ It’s not only the smooth skin and the bouncy hair and the full lips—it’s the way she can’t seem to stop _ beaming_. Charlotte wears her ease and her propensity for fun on her face openly, and it’s something Beth can’t understand—she’s constantly trying to just avoid looking as stressed out as she feels. She envies it. It’s something she’s never had, not between her parents and trying to raise Annie too young. 

Maybe she’d looked like this for a brief period of time—a few years after she’d left her mom’s, when the dust had settled. It was possible. It’d have been in the early period of her marriage, when things still _ felt _ good with Dean, but before Annie had left a positive pregnancy on the kitchen counter for Beth to find. It’s hard to remember, though. 

There’s something—something about Charlotte here that reminds Beth of _ Ruby _, of all people. The Ruby that existed before Sara got sick, before she was worn down by worry and doctor’s bills. The Ruby that peeks out, sometimes, now that Sara’s got her new kidney. When things just pause for a minute, when Stan’s not in jail or when her kid’s not in a hospital bed, Ruby can carry herself like this—magnetic in her happiness. 

Beth wants to hate Charlotte, but she can’t seem to muster it up. 

Beth must be wearing _ this _ on her face, because Rio tries to search it, tries to get a grip on her, but he just stares at her with his brows in a hard line and his lips thin.

“You have kids? How many?” Beth asks. This, at least, seems like safe territory to explore. 

“Three.”

Three. People had always said, “Oh, you’ve got your hands full!” to Beth when she’d had three. And it _ is _ a lot of kids.

But somehow Beth hadn’t expected _ mom _ to be Rio’s type. She'd thought that maybe—that maybe it was just _her_. 

“How old?” Peter asks.

“Well, _ my _ Marcus is, god, nearly fifteen now! Makes me feel old!”

Beth can’t even process her surprise at how old Charlotte’s son is—Charlotte can’t be more than 35—because _ her _ Marcus _ ? _ She knows about _ Rio’s _ Marcus? _She_ hadn’t learned about his existence for the better part of a year. 

A thought surges forward: _ Has Charlotte _ met _ him—? _

“...then Trey is thirteen, and my youngest, Micah, he’s seven.”

_ Seven. Just like Danny. _

“Cute kids,” Rio throws in, and Beth feels a pang in her chest as she imagines Rio spending time with them. 

“Do you have kids?” Charlotte asks Beth. 

“Four,” Beth says thickly, and she gives the spiel about their names and ages, even as she finds it hard to form words. 

“Wow,” Charlotte says, as if Beth’s four is a lot more than her three. She turns to Rio. “Are your kids’ friends?”

“Sorta,” Rio says, shrugging with one shoulder. Beth senses Rio doesn’t really want to talk about Marcus, even if he’d told her about him. Maybe Charlotte _ hasn’t _ met him? “Sometimes they play together at the park. Marcus likes her li’l girl.”

_ And Jane likes Marcus, _ Beth thinks. It’s getting more infrequent now that time and space have separated them, but sometimes when Jane plays with her Doc McStuffins toy, she asks about him—the boy from the park who won her a present at Chuck E. Cheese. 

“I didn’t know that you had playdates!” Peter says, and it’s an innocuous statement, probably just something to say, maybe even just him thinking out loud, trying to piece together their friendship, but Beth’s spine stiffens. 

Turner’s voice fills her ears. _ It was never just a playdate, was it? _

Seeming to realize something else, Peter adds, “Then again, I didn’t even realize you were a dad!”

_ Of course you didn’t, _ Beth thinks, a little rudely. _ It’s not like I talk about him— _

And shouldn’t she, though? She’s been avoiding the Kostra conversation, and here it is coming to a head, but what’s Rio’s angle? Is he really going to let them blabber on about their kids? When is he going to take control of the conversation? When is he going to start dropping riddles and hints that only Beth can decipher? _ How _ is he going to do it without alerting Peter and Charlotte that something is up?

What’s his _ plan?_

“Yep,” Rio responds to Peter, trying to smile thinly as he plays along at this double date getting-to-know-you small talk bullshit, and Beth takes some satisfaction in the fact that she can sense some of his discomfort, too. 

“How old is your boy?”

“Six,” Rio says. No more, no less. 

“Oh, right. Like Jane,” Peter says. “It’s a good age—I remember when my oldest was six—“

Peter launches into a story that Rio tries to pretend to be interested in, and it circles around to a mention of Peter’s old job as a loan officer. 

“I worked in a bank once,” Charlotte says. “I didn’t like it. Too stuffy.”

“Yes!” Peter agrees. “I hated wearing a tie to work.”

Rio scans Peter up and down, one eyebrow cocked, a smile playing at his lips. Peter’s wearing yet _ another _ sweater vest over a plaid button-up. 

This goes back and forth for a few volleys of comparing bank atmospheres, and Beth expects Rio to pivot, to try and say something about the toy store—it's an easy enough follow-up in a conversation about work—but he doesn’t. 

He’s just listening politely, doing nothing until… until he reaches out from where his arm is slung over the back of her chair to begin playing with Charlotte’s hair. He twirls the strands between his fingers almost absentmindedly, but then he brings his gaze to Beth over his glass and refuses to look away. 

Beth’s can feel goosebumps on her arm and a flush spreading across her chest—red, like the peonies on her blouse. Her jaw feels like it’s fused shut as she grinds her teeth. 

It’s Peter that maneuvers the conversation to the present. 

“So, what do you do now?” he asks Charlotte. “Did your job bring you to Detroit?”

“Yes. I was managing a little B&B in Port Austin—I’ve been doing it since Marcus was six or seven, and I’ve grown close with the owners. They always let me have the kids hang around there, which was a bonus. The husband just recently passed away, and the wife didn’t want all the work of overseeing everything—so she willed the inn she had here to me. Well, and the B&B, but I’m here to run the bigger operation. I left my assistant manager in charge up there—so!” Charlotte claps once as an exclamation point to her spiel. “Now I get to do everything exactly as I like. It’s exciting.”

Beth sees a peek of Charlotte as someone that likes everything the exact right way. Her lipstick matches the stone on her bracelet, which matches her pumps. 

“Congratulations,” Peter says, lifting his glass. They all clink, and Charlotte looks a little embarrassed but a little pleased too. “I imagine it’s fun, but also a lot of work.”

“God, yes,” Charlotte agrees, finishing off her Manhattan. She pulls the cherry off the metal toothpick with her teeth, and Beth sees Rio wet his lips. “The previous manager—she’s sweet, but her organizational system was a _ mess_! The books are a nightmare, and she stores things in weird places so it’s hard to find everything. Don’t even get me _ started _ on the kitchen.”

“Sounds like you need Beth’s expertise,” Peter jokes. Beth jerks to look at him, confused. “She’s got her kitchen organized within genre—you know, sweet, savory, what have you—and then alphabetically within _ that _.”

This was something Beth had mentioned to him offhandedly when she was trying to direct him to the cardamom when they’d been baking cookies. She feels a stab of annoyance that he throws it out now to tease her. 

“Oh, my god. Sounds like Christopher. His closet is color-coded! God, maybe these two should be the ones on a date,” she jokes, pointing back and forth between Beth and Rio. “Should we leave? Give you guys some privacy?” 

_ She’s seen his closet? She knows his name? _Beth's mind is reeling. 

Charlotte laughs, and Peter joins, but Beth can’t fake it. Her fingers, which are wrapped around her empty bourbon glass, tighten until her knuckles are white. 

“Nah,” Rio says smoothly, like he’s in on the joke. “It’d never work.”

The table laughs again, but Charlotte prods him, like maybe she’d dropped the comment just to try and figure out what the deal is between the two of them. “And why not?”

“Not sure I could live up to her exacting standards,” Rio says simply, and Beth sucks in a breath. Rio lifts his glass to Peter as if to say, _ More power to you, man. _

Peter blushes a deep crimson. Too embarrassed to clarify that he and Beth are _ not _ dating, he attempts to change the subject. “Wait—is that your real name? Christopher?” 

“Yep,” Rio says tersely. 

Beth lifts her glass at the waitress, signaling a refill. The waitress gestures to the others at the table, silently asking if they’d like refills as well, and Beth nods. God knows they all need it. 

“Ooh, do you have a nickname?” Charlotte asks, intrigued. “What is it?”

“It’s just a dumb childhood nickname,” Rio says, like he’d rather not say. Beth narrows her eyes, wondering if he doesn’t want to say because it’s his crime alias, or because of other reasons she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“But what _ is _ it?” Charlotte presses, poking Rio in the arm. 

“Rio.”

“Rio? Like _ river_?” Charlotte asks curiously. Beth can’t believe she’s never thought to look up what Rio means in Spanish. “Where’d that come from?”

“Just liked swimmin’, I guess.” He scratches his ear, and Beth knows it’s a lie. Where _ had _ the name come from? His privacy over this was nothing like his amusement when Beth had thrown his real name in his face. Rio tries to redirect the conversation. “Like Elizabeth’s oldest.”

“Danny?” Charlotte asks. “Or is that Kenny?”

“Kenny,” Beth answers, turning back to Charlotte, but she’s watching Rio through the corner of her eye. He runs a hand down his face, fingers pinching at his cheeks, smoothing his expression out into something indifferent. 

“I need to get my boys into some activities here,” Charlotte says. “They’re a little upset about the move in the middle of the school year and I need to—”

“Stop stressin’ yourself about it,” Rio says, trying soothe her and tugging a strand of her hair. “You just got here. Y’all are still setting up the house.”

_ Where the fuck is the waitress with the drinks? _Beth thinks desperately. 

Charlotte shakes her head, still guilty for uprooting her children. “Do you have any recommendations, Elizabeth?”

Beth opens her mouth to correct her, to say _ Just Beth, _but she decides against it. She doesn’t want to draw more attention to the fact that Rio’s the only one that calls her that. 

“The only person I know here so far is my sister, and while she’s _ amazing _ at practically everything, she knows nothing about this—she doesn’t have any kids. Do your kids play sports or—?”

“Oh, she keeps ‘em busy,” Rio says, and Beth thinks of all the places he’s shown up from trailing her. The pool. The orthodontist. The dance recitals. 

Beth clears her throat.

“Well, Kenny does swim and krav maga, but we’ll be starting him on football next year—my ex is insisting,” Beth says, glancing at Rio to see how he reacts to a mention of Dean. Besides a slow blink, he doesn’t. Of course. “Emma does basketball and tap, Danny does karate and baseball, and Jane just does dance.” 

“Oh, Micah’s obsessed with _ The Karate Kid_,” Charlotte says. “I think he’d _ love _ that. Where do you take him?”

And this starts a conversation about the balance between having your kids build character through extracurriculars, to leaving enough time for them to just be _ kids_, and then it meanders to the kinds of activities _ they _ all did growing up. Beth learns Rio did track, and she’s struck by the fact that Charlotte gets to know him in ways that she didn’t, that she _ won’t_. Rio doesn’t have to be so guarded about everything else when all he has to be guarded about is _ work_.

The conversation shifts and mutates, and Beth’s barely following it, lost in her own head, when Charlotte addresses her: “I mean, a guy with best friends named Demon and Mr. Cisco has _ got _ to have some interesting secrets. Elizabeth—you’ve got to know _ something! _ I mean, you’ve been friends for a while, right? Spill!”

Beth’s stomach clenches. Charlotte says this all very playfully, but Beth can sense her nosiness underneath. She’d agreed to this ridiculous double date, Beth was sure, because she was trying to suss out more about Rio. 

Couldn’t she just break into his loft and rifle through his stuff like _ she’d _ had to do it? Better yet, couldn't she be satisfied with what she already knew?

Beth’s mind is racing. Charlotte has either met Demon and Mr. Cisco or... Rio has _ talked _ about them? Referred to them as his best friends?

_ Are _ they?

Why is _ Beth _ the one that’s suddenly having to offer up information that she doesn’t have? She didn’t know of Marcus’s existence for a _ year_. Charlotte knows after, what? Less than a month? Beth doesn’t know a thing about Demon and Mr. Cisco—sometimes she can’t even figure out which one is which, and Rio’s never breathed a word about them. She doesn’t know how they came to work together, if they hang out, _ anything. _

The whole night has been like some sort of performance for Rio, a way to watch her squirm. It was ridiculous, the way the two of them had sat there almost silently while Peter and Charlotte—absolute strangers—were able to carry on a perfectly normal conversation.

But Rio always did love a performance. Beth thinks of the first time he’d touched her face, gently comforting her while Dean was tied up, bloodied and bruised at their dining room table, forcing Dean to watch the show—and Rio had lulled _ her _ into a false sense of calm before forcing her to watch him shoot a bullet through Dean’s chest. She thinks of the tire iron, and the theatrics of him pressing the golden gun to her chin even though he’d never use it on her. 

Beth knows that Rio loves that she’s forced to play along right now. They’ve both declared that they’re _ really good friends_, and it would be strange, now, if she could offer nothing.

“Hm,” Beth says, stalling, flitting through what she knows is a relatively small pool of details that she has had to piece together. She thinks maybe the Spanish pop stars—but no, besides the fact that Charlotte probably already _ knows_, it’s a memory tied to the day she brought him into her bedroom. Anything from his apartment is out, since Charlotte’s already been there. She tries to think, but besides the things she won’t touch—his father, his son, his ex, his propensity for violence—there’s nothing.

It sits like a stone in her stomach. 

It feels like she barely knows him. Despite all the time with him, thinking about him, _ wanting _ him (this last one is a whisper in the back of her mind, unacknowledged)... she knows so little.

Charlotte knows as much—maybe even _ more_—than Beth. If anything, _ she _ should be the one asking _ Charlotte _ for dirt.

"You know Christopher,” she says finally, defeated, and Rio glances up at her, surprised. “He doesn't let too many people get close. You must be... special."

Rio’s face is blank. 

Beth tries to smile at Charlotte, but it doesn’t matter. Rio’s torn his gaze away from Beth to look at Charlotte, who is tilting her head and smiling warmly at Rio like she’s pleased. Peter’s watching the two of them with something like envy, and Beth just… she can’t take it anymore.

“I’m going to use the restroom,” Beth announces abruptly. “And check in with the kids. I’ll be back.”

She’d thrown in the phone call because she needs a minute to herself. She needs to _ breathe_. The lounge suddenly feels _ suffocating_, the other people too close, their conversations flooding her ears. Rio follows Beth with his eyes as she stands and moves past him on her way to the restrooms, but he doesn’t turn his head. The conversation must resume the moment she breaks away because she doesn’t feel _ anyone’s _ eyes on her—not Rio’s, not Peter’s—as she beelines to the hallway with the bathrooms, walking straight past them to the door that spills out onto an empty patio.

Winter’s nearly over, the first sprouts of spring have already pushed up through some of the frost in large potted plants on the brick ground out here, but tonight, it’s cold. The wind nips at her, but it feels _ good_. 

There’s some light spilling out onto the patio from the dim lights inside of the lounge, but it’s mostly dark and it feels private. She steps to the side, a bit further into the shadows, even though nobody’s looking out here, and she relishes the fact that she’s completely _ alone_. 

Good. She can gather her thoughts, catch her breath, and return—and she suspects she might be able to get Peter to help her make a hasty exit. If she mentions she doesn’t feel well, or that she’s tired, it’s likely he’ll move to to get them out of there quickly, before Rio even has a chance to do… whatever it is he’s planning on doing.

Scowling, Beth scuffs her boot against the ground. This night had been doubly tortuous. He’s been nonchalant, playing it casual while he knows she’s agonizing, waiting for the other shoe to drop as she wonders when he’ll finally bring up all the Kostra stuff. Not to mention Charlotte, who she realizes isn’t so much like _ Ruby _ as she is like—

The patio door creaks and swings open and out comes Rio, holding it and scanning the area for her. He looks right first, then out across the empty furniture, until he finally sees her to his left. 

He lets the door fall shut behind him, and it clangs noisily as it falls back into the frame. 

It does something to her, being able to watch him look for her. Knowing he’d followed her at the first opportunity. She hadn’t been expecting that. Not this time, not with Charlotte there. 

It’s heady. Like when she’d walked down the hall to that other bathroom, knowing he’d come, and yet being surprised that he had. 

She tries to squash the memory. Forget it. _ This _ isn’t _ that_. 

“What are you doing?” she snaps. 

“You got a problem or somethin’?” She can see the amusement dancing in his eyes, knowing he’s won in this little game he’s playing.

Beth’s blood boils. 

“What are you doing out here?” she demands. “Better yet, what are you doing _ here _at all?”

She wishes she hadn’t asked the questions in such quick succession—of _ course _ Rio ignores the first question to answer the second.

Beth almost has trouble hearing his reply, focused as she is on wondering why he’d followed her outside—what fun would it be for him to pin the Kostra problem on her in private? 

“—coincidence?” Rio finishes drawling. 

“Huh?”

Realizing she hadn’t been listening to him, Rio's jaw rocks. He narrows his eyes at her, but Beth refuses to look away. 

He looks good in the jean button-up. It’s blue. Lighter than what she normally sees him in. And with his sleeves rolled up, he’s got his forearms on display—not unlike when she’d first seen him—_ really _ seen him for who he actually was—in that warehouse. Not just a gangbanger, but a _ boss_. Someone who knew how to get things done, who knew how to command a room, who know how to run a successful business.

Someone exactly the opposite of her husband. 

And maybe she’d understand it more if Charlotte _ were _ Beth’s exact opposite. It would hurt, but she’d understand the inclination, considering. 

But Charlotte _ wasn’t _ Beth’s opposite.

On the surface? Maybe. She was open and playful and happy in ways Beth didn’t know how to be with strangers. 

But she was close with her sister, and she was a _ mom_, first and foremost—Beth could see that in the way she’d fretted about getting her kids involved in some activities as soon as possible to help them adjust to the move. In the way she’d spoken about loving her job because she’d always been able to keep her kids close to her as she worked.

And her _ job_? Operating an _ inn_? Like Beth, she was running a house and a kitchen—it was just bigger and it had guests. 

She was just as nosy (maybe just a bit better at hiding it) and she likes everything to be a certain way and—

Rio clocks Beth staring intently at his forearms, and he drops his gaze to meet hers and smirks. 

“Why are you out here?” she asks again defensively, crossing her arms across her chest.

Rio takes a step toward her, eyebrows raised, mock concerned. “You actin’ weird. Figured you needed to be checked up on.”

_ And yeah, that sounds about right. _ Beth thinks. _ Finally. _

Finally he’s circling back to Kostra, to their fighting, and she hates it, but it feels familiar and _ right. _ The whole night has been a back-and-forth for her: she’s been jealous over the ways that Rio is different around Charlotte, but she’s been dreading the moment the Rio _ she _ knows would pop back up.

“Did you bring her here to make me jealous?” The words bubble up out of Beth unexpectedly. She squares her shoulders as if she doesn’t immediately regret saying it.

Rio runs his tongue along his teeth. “She’s got nothin’ to do with you.”

Beth scoffs, shaking her head and looking down at the ground. “Bullshit.”

The corner of Rio’s mouth quirks up almost imperceptibly. 

“Oh yeah?” Rio asks, taking a step closer to Beth. “Why’s that?”

“She’s _ exactly _ like me.”

“She’s _nothin_’ like you,” Rio says, and the words are laced with annoyance. 

Looking up at him, Beth studies his face. Tries to interpret that. Is it an insult? A regret? 

“Yes, she _ is_,” Beth argues, and she lays all the reasons at his feet.

Rio just cocks his head, looking at her, as if he wants to say something about who he thinks _ she’s _ dating.

Beth thinks of Peter remarking that this place was “different than his usual haunts.” It didn’t matter that Peter as different from Rio as sweater vests and gold guns: Beth was still dragging him to places like this, places apparently exactly fitted to Rio’s taste, trying to make him someone he wasn’t. And he was pretending he was into it, but the memory it brings up for Beth is the way Rio _ wouldn’t _ pretend he liked the art Beth liked in that museum in Toronto. They’d fought about that. Beth had told him to be _ polite _ and he had said _ polite’s got nothin’ on honest _ and Beth had said _ honesty has its place _ and they’d circled around and around, but god, fighting with him was _ fun_. Kept her on her toes. She’s itching for it now, and it makes her feel out of control but—

“You knew she’d drive me crazy.”

“Like I said: coincidence.”

“You just _ happened _ to be here and _ happened _ to want to join us? Three days before my time’s up?”

“Well, when an opportunity presents itself…” Rio shrugs, pleased with himself. “You take it.”

Something snaps in Beth when he says this. She’d thought she was craving a fight, but maybe she was just looking to fight anyone except _ herself. _ She’s spent every night replaying that warehouse kiss in her head, and she’s been refusing to pull her vibrator out of her end table, knowing exactly where her thoughts will go, but she can’t do it anymore. She’s tired of fighting it, so—

She kisses him. It requires her to take a step towards him, to reach up a hand and pull his face down toward her, but she does it. Rio doesn’t kiss her back at first—it all happens so fast—and, embarrassed, Beth is about to pull back when Rio makes a noise in the back of his throat, protesting, and he drags her lip between his teeth. 

Beth feels like an exposed nerve. Rio moves his hands from her ribs to her back, squeezes her closer to him, and every place that his fingers run over is electrocuted. He slips his tongue into her mouth and she moans, snaking her own hands down to his hips. She slips her fingers beneath his button-up so that she can feel the warmth of his skin and the sharpness of his hip bone. She pinches him closer to her, waist-to-waist, and she can feel that he’s already getting hard for her. It sends a thrilling shock through her spine. 

Her mind is completely blank outside of the intoxicating sensations of him against her—of his body underneath her hands, of his scent in her nose and his tongue in her mouth. 

Beth forces Rio backward until he collides with the brick wall of the building, and she uses that stability to press into him, to grind into him, wordlessly begging him to touch her.

She wants him. All of him. Here, now, and who cares if they’re caught? Who cares if it makes everything around them implode, who cares what (or _ who_) is caught in their crossfire? Not her. Not in this moment. 

Rio slips a thigh between her legs and uses it to exert pressure. It’s not enough. A frustrated little noise escapes her lips, and Rio smiles against her mouth. They stop kissing, just breathing each other’s air heavily, until Rio says, dickish, “Somethin’ you need?” 

He purses his lips and raises an eyebrow, fucking with her, but she doesn’t care. Beth lifts onto her tiptoes to kiss him again, and his lips part, waiting for her. She darts away at the last moment, going instead for his ear, sucking the lobe between her lips. Rio groans. 

She gets what she wants. He pulls away from her, grips her arms harder than she expects, and then spins her around so that her back is against the wall. His hand dips into the waistband of her pants the moment her lips are on his again. 

There’s not a lot of room to maneuver with her jeans still buttoned, and he circles around her clit through her panties in this frustrating way. Beth whines in her throat, and Rio doesn’t relent—he keeps teasing until she can’t take it anymore. 

He’s right: she doesn’t just want it, she _ needs _ it. 

She reaches down to unclasp the button so that he has more access, but he doesn’t do anything with the extra room immediately. She nips at his lip, a little harder than she means to, and he bites back. 

Time’s running out, she knows it is, they can’t stay out here forever—she puts her hand on his elbow to shove his hand deeper into her pants, and _ finally _, he acquiesces. His finger slips underneath the thin, damp material of her panties, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat at how wet he finds her. Two fingers slip into her, filling her immediately in all the ways she’s wanted for weeks.

“_ Fuck _ ,” they both pant, in unison, and he begins pumping in and out of her as much as he can. It’s a bit shallow, but it doesn’t matter—Beth’s so wired for him, she’s nearly there already. She bucks against him, keening, and he presses his thumb against her clit_—finally_.

She feels herself clench around his fingers after just a few lazy swirls of his finger, almost there, just needs a bit more—and then—

—then his fingers slip out of her. Beth’s eyes flutter open, and her mouth gapes as he wipes his fingers on _ her _ jeans.

“What—?”

“Think it’s time to head back,” Rio says nonchalantly. “I’ll go first. Think you need a minute.” He looks her up and down, jeans unbuttoned, blouse disheveled, hair mussed. 

“Are you serious?”

“Just followin’ your lead, darlin’.” He shrugs, and she knows he’s thinking of _ we can’t _ at the warehouse. She wants to protest, but she won’t beg for him like this. Rio walks away from her, opens the patio door, and disappears inside, leaving her alone in the darkness.

It’s all part of their game. They always get even. Sometimes he’s just better at it than her.

* * *

Beth hopes Rio popped into the bathroom to look at _ himself _ in the mirror, because when she does, she sees that her lipstick is smeared. Did she leave some on _ him_?

She fixes it, then dabs some concealer on her mouth where there’s a little redness from his bite. She brushes out her hair with a comb she has handy in her purse, and retucks her blouse before heading back to the table.

Willing herself not to blush, her footfalls feel heavy and excruciatingly slow as she makes her way back to the table. 

Peter looks up at her. “Kids okay?”

Beth wants to refuse to look at Rio, but she fails. One glance tells her that he’s twirling Charlotte’s hair around one finger and sipping on his vodka. Watching her, waiting to see her fumble. 

“They’re fine. The babysitter offered to stay overnight,” she says. It’s true. She’d managed a quick phone call to Annie in the bathroom while she’d been fixing herself up, phone on speaker on the counter while she’s wiped the smudged lipstick off her mouth. 

Peter meets her eyes, brow slightly wrinkled, wondering if Beth’s suggesting what he thinks she is. 

And is she? She doesn’t know, exactly. She’s feeling reckless and also like she has to make a decision. She’s been wavering for the past month, not moving in either direction—or rather, only allowing herself to backslide—but shouldn’t she loosen the reigns and try to more _ forward_? Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that what Ruby and Annie had suggested? 

“Should we go back to your place?” Beth asks, licking her lips, a little nervous.

“Um—” Peter’s surprised, but he composes himself quickly. “Yeah. Yes. I’ll go close out the bill.”

He gets up, gives her a crooked smile, and then disappears to find the waitress.

Charlotte grins at her, like she finds them charming. Beth wonders, briefly, what the two of them might have talked about at the table while she and Rio were gone.

Rio’s eyes are dark, and the look on his face reminds her of when she’d strong-armed him into the 50/50 deal in her office.

Every time _ she _ gets even, it’s like he thinks he’s lost.

“Have fun,” Charlotte says, amused, when Peter returns.

Beth just nods, and then they leave the restaurant. She feels Rio’s eyes on her until she disappears into the darkness outside.

**Author's Note:**

> Charlotte's in subplot is 100% influenced by Gilmore Girls. 
> 
> Please give all your kudos to medievalraven for giving feedback on this while she was on vacation. Seriously, guys. She's amazing and she keeps me in check and gives me the best ideas.


End file.
